I’m still incensed by LACMA’s decision to maim its film department under what seem like increasingly flimsy reasonings. The LA Times’ Kenneth Turan gives it to LACMA, hitting the the key points – that the $1 million dollar number is accounting BS, that LACMA has been undersupporting the Film Department for years, that film is centric to Los Angles’ creative identity and therefore must have a place of honor at LACMA. Turan also points out how great a facility LACMA’s Bing Theater is, how amazing the programming there already is, etc…
What I’m hearing on the LACMA side of things seems flimsy, and unsatisfying. What I’m hearing from critics of this decision are reasoned defenses of an incredibly important program, based on professional knowledge and direct experience of the program’s efficacy.
Turan questions whether LACMA would “shutter its collection of Etruscan art if not enough people came?” He answers “Probably not.” I agree – art institutions routinely have programs that are money losers or are at least less popular when compared with other programs. But here it appears that film is being held to a higher standard than other art programming. Does LACMA run the numbers when accepting a donation or purchasing a work as to whether it will increase the profitability of the museum? I would hope not. I would hope that those decisions are made with the mission of the museum in line – does this add to the museum’s ability to serve both the Southern California region and the international visitors who visit the museum? Does it make the collection stronger, more able to communicate ideas and history to the public? Sure the budget has to be looked at, but it can’t be the center of the universe – organizations must work with their numbers, not be slaves to them.
As an art administrator, I know that operating programs that don’t make a profit or break even often has other benefits, some as simple as fulfilling an organization’s mission and others that are more subtle. I’d argue that LACMA, particularly as a museum in film capital Los Angeles, has a special obligation to run a film department, and that the museum needs to consider the larger role that LACMA’s film department and screening series play, beyond the dollars that the department gains or loses.
LACMA routinely plays host to questionably interesting blockbuster exhibitons, and those of us who demand more from our museum than King Tut put up with it, presuming that the outsize profits that those exhibitions generate are funding other niche programs (not that the Film Department is a niche program, but LACMA sure has treated it like one) that don’t make enough money to support themselves. Every multi-program institution has areas of programming that make money and areas that lose money. At Angels Gate Cultural Center, our Studio Artist Program brings in an amount of income, and while most of that goes to the administrative overhead and maintenance of the program, it has also historically made it possible for the Center to operate our galleries, which because they are free and open to the public, are a budgetary expense. That is our mission, and we are required to operate those galleries on that basis in our lease. The issue isn’t that a program loses money, the whole issue is – does the organizations budget work out in the end and is it serving its mission? When I was co-chair of the San Pedro Film Society and programmed film series, we had the same decisions to make – balancing a rhythm of popular, money making programs with less popular, but perhaps more interesting programs. And we made it work – it’s not rocket science.
LACMA is serving its mission when it has a film program, whether that program makes money or loses money. Sure there are budgetary pressures on the program, like any other, but we’re not running a for-profit corporation like Lockheed-Martin here where any money-losing division is immediately questionable in its efficacy or relevance. I’d like to think that arts administrators, particularly the presumably smart folks who run world class museums like LACMA, have the skills to make more holistic judgements than the flimsy excuse that Govan has put forward.
Govan hints at a stronger, better program in the future, but nothing LACMA is saying or doing suggests that. Shifting the workload of operating the film programming across multiple, non-film departments just adds to the workloads of folks who are already working hard, and asks them to collectively cover someone else’s job in addition to doing their own (which is always great for organizational morale!). The idea that “artist created” films will somehow stimulate the program is hogwash, as well. Firstly, LACMA already shows artist’s films when it suits it – I saw a pair of Matthew Barney films, shown in conjunction with Hard Targets, and that was great. But… I’m part of the teeny, tiny audience that will even sit through the mental and/or physical endurance fests that most artists’ films require. Secondly, the films LACMA is showing now in its weekend series are already “artist created”. Nagisa Oshima or James Mason or any other subject of LACMA’s programs is just as much an artist as Barney or any other filmmaking “fine artist”. And frankly, professional filmmakers are some of the greatest artists of our era, and certainly far better in their focused discipline than 99% of the artists-turned-filmmakers out there. At this point, LACMA is telling us that it doesn’t value its current programming and the people who have enough to continue it and build upon it. What we’re seeing here does not look like the beginning to a programmatic change, it looks like a LACMA has employed a dull butcher’s knife when a far more subtle and smartly wielded tool would might do.